Talent management is key for attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent. However, organizations with limited resources often overlook this important function. Hiring new employees and keeping workers engaged isn’t as easy as it used to be. Between the Great Resignation and the “quiet quitting” phenomenon, employers need to step up their talent strategy to keep their current employees happy.
Fortunately, talent management is not a lost cause. With the right approach, it can help you stay on top of hiring needs and employee performance initiatives while providing a positive work experience. Find out how improving your talent management practices can boost employee engagement, performance, and retention.
Key Components of Talent Management
Talent management is the process of hiring, developing, and retaining high-performing talent to fit the needs of your organization. Properly managing talent throughout the entire employee lifecycle presents quite a challenge.
Many organizations put most of their focus on attracting and onboarding great talent, failing to make ongoing talent management a priority. A unified human capital management (HCM) system can help employers seamlessly manage all of their organization’s talent management functions on a continuous basis. Here are the key components of a well-rounded talent management strategy.
Recruiting and Onboarding
Talent acquisition is a vital area of talent management. Recruiting and sourcing candidates who are the right fit for both the role and the organization is essential. By investing more time and resources into attracting and identifying the best talent from the beginning, employers can improve long-term retention and performance.
Providing a positive onboarding experience can also encourage employee engagement. The hiring process, including the interview and onboarding stages, is an employee’s first introduction to the company. Using the right human resource management system can streamline hiring and onboarding and remove tedious tasks such as excessive data entry. A unified HCM with talent management features can help new employees better navigate the workplace by providing access to all benefits information, training programs, and pertinent resources in a centralized location.
If the process is well organized and supportive, it will set employees up for success and create a positive impression of the employer. In fact, organizations that provide a positive onboarding experience have been found to increase new hire retention by 82% and improve new employee productivity by 70%.
Goal Setting
Another key component of talent management is goal setting. Creating performance goals for employees and teams is an effective way to ensure that all performance expectations are clear. Employees and managers can work together to create specific and achievable goals.
ContinuumCloud’s HCM can track progress towards goals in a clear and transparent manner. Employees can always review their progress in the system between performance reviews or check-ins so that they know how they’re doing and can seek assistance if they’re struggling to meet their objectives. Creating individual productivity or performance targets can also help keep the company on track with its overall revenue targets.
Performance Check-Ins
Many organizations utilize annual performance reviews as their primary performance management tool, but that is simply not enough these days. Continual feedback and ongoing mentoring are necessary to properly support employees.
Tracking performance and delivering feedback on a more frequent basis might seem like a lot of extra work. However, ContinuumCloud makes it simple by allowing employers to track goals and create paperless performance appraisals within the platform. These appraisals can be tailored to each position using rule-based configurations and templates. These templates can even be used to automate quick weekly check-ins to provide ongoing feedback to employees without a huge time commitment.
Employee Recognition
While having a productive workforce that sets (and meets) goals is integral to success, it’s essential to remember that employees want to feel seen and heard. Recognizing and rewarding top-performing employees for their hard work is an important part of talent management. In fact, Harvard Business School found that over 80% of employees don’t feel adequately recognized or rewarded by their employers. This lack of recognition can quickly lead to disengagement.
ContinuumCloud’s HCM can be used to track a variety of achievements to help employers properly recognize their staff. Managers and human resources staff can monitor goal completion as well as productivity targets to track employee performance and provide appropriate recognition.
Training and Development
Training and development are key parts of talent management. A lot of training occurs at the start of employment, but training and talent development should also be an ongoing process. New hires need support during onboarding to learn about their role and the organization. However, continually improving employee skillsets will benefit both the company and the employee. Investing in training and development helps companies build a more highly skilled workforce. In behavioral health and human services organizations, this generally translates to better patient care.
Professional development can help employees prepare for new roles within the organization. According to LinkedIn’s 2022 Workplace Learning Report, companies that excel at internal mobility have significantly higher retention rates (5.4 years) compared to companies that struggle with internal mobility (2.9 years). Setting goals to help employees reach the next step can motivate them and discourage them from looking outside the organization for the next step in their career path.
Keeping every employee on track with professional development goals and training initiatives can be time-consuming, but a good human capital management system makes it easy. With ContinuumCloud’s HCM platform, employers can connect goals and performance metrics to employees, teams, and departments to encourage ongoing growth.
Why Talent Management Is Important for Behavioral Health Organizations
While all organizations should prioritize talent management, it’s especially imperative for organizations in behavioral health and human services.
In ContinuumCloud’s 2022 Tech Experiences & Impact Report, behavioral health leaders and HR professionals identified recruiting, engagement, and retention as their top organizational goals and concerns.
The behavioral health field has historically struggled with employee retention due to lower salaries and high rates of burnout. Many agencies in behavioral health and human services, particularly in the public and nonprofit sectors, also struggle with recruiting due to budgetary limitations. Without the ability to offer high salaries and tons of extra perks, it’s tough to maintain a competitive advantage.
Moreover, managing talent is crucial in the behavioral health field due to keeping staff up-to-date with training and credentials. Employees serving patients must stay current on all required continuing education to maintain their credentials or licenses.
With ContinuumCloud, employers can set individual and team goals to track progress and keep everyone aligned. You can also track credentials and receive automatic reminders about credentials that are up for renewal. Staying current with credentials and licenses also ensures that patients receive the best care possible.
Boost Talent Management With ContinuumCloud
There’s no doubt that companies that invest in talent management can see major improvements in engagement and retention. ContinuumCloud’s unified HCM platform provides the necessary tools to boost recruiting, employee development, and performance. Plus, it can help employers recognize team members who deserve the spotlight. From goal tracking to performance appraisal templates and credential tracking, ContinuumCloud can simplify the entire spectrum of processes.
ContinuumCloud is the only HCM solution designed to meet the unique needs and challenges of behavioral health and human services providers. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your organization improve the employer and employee experience.
